{"id":2179,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:57","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2179"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:57","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:57","slug":"61-chapter-vii-purification-intelligence-and-will-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga\/61-chapter-vii-purification-intelligence-and-will-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-61_Chapter VII Purification \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Intelligence and Will.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td width=\"100%\" valign=\"top\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"4\">Chapter VII <\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"4\">Purification \u2014 Intelligence and Will<br \/>\n<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<b><br \/>\n\t\t\t<font size=\"5\">T<\/font>O PURIFY<\/b> the buddhi we must first understand its rather<br \/>\ncomplex composition. And first we have to make clear the distinction, ignored in ordinary speech, between the<br \/>\n<i>manas<\/i>, mind, and <i>buddhi<\/i>, the discerning intelligence and the enlightened will. Manas is the sense mind. Man&#8217;s initial mentality is not at all a thing of reason and will; it is an animal, physical or sense mentality which constitutes its whole experience from<br \/>\nthe impressions made on it by the external world and by its own embodied consciousness which responds to the outward<br \/>\nstimulus of this kind of experience. The buddhi only comes in as a secondary power which has in the evolution taken the first<br \/>\nplace, but is still dependent on the inferior instrument it uses; it depends for its workings on the sense mind and does what it<br \/>\ncan on its own higher range by a difficult, elaborate and rather stumbling extension of knowledge and action from the physical<br \/>\nor sense basis. A half-enlightened physical or sense mentality is the ordinary type of the mind of man. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tIn fact the manas is a development from the external chitta; it is a first organising of the crude stuff of the consciousness<br \/>\nexcited and aroused by external contacts, <i>b<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#257;<\/font>hya-spar<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#347;<\/font>a<\/i>. What we are<br \/>\n\t\t\tphysically is a soul asleep in matter which has evolved to the<br \/>\n\t\t\tpartial wakefulness of a living body pervaded by a crude stuff of<br \/>\n\t\t\texternal consciousness more or less alive and attentive to the<br \/>\n\t\t\toutward impacts of the external world in which we are developing our<br \/>\n\t\t\tconscious being. In the animal this stuff of externalised<br \/>\n\t\t\tconsciousness organises itself into a well-regulated mental sense or<br \/>\n\t\t\torgan of perceiving and acting mind. Sense is in fact the mental<br \/>\n\t\t\tcontact of the embodied consciousness with its surroundings. This<br \/>\n\t\t\tcontact is always essentially a mental phenomenon; but in fact it<br \/>\n\t\t\tdepends chiefly upon the development of certain physical organs of<br \/>\n\t\t\tcontact with objects and with their properties to whose&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>663<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\timages it is able by habit to give their mental values. What we call<br \/>\nthe physical senses have a double element, the physical-nervous impression of the object and the mental-nervous value we give<br \/>\nto it, and the two together make up our seeing, hearing, smell, taste, touch with all those varieties of sensation of which they,<br \/>\nand the touch chiefly, are the starting-point or first transmitting agency. But the manas is able to receive sense impressions and<br \/>\ndraw results from them by a direct transmission not dependent on the physical organ. This is more distinct in the lower creation.<br \/>\nMan, though he has really a greater capacity for this direct sense, the sixth sense in the mind, has let it fall into abeyance by an<br \/>\nexclusive reliance on the physical senses supplemented by the activity of the buddhi. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThe manas is therefore in the first place an organiser of sense experience; in addition it organises the natural reactions<br \/>\nof the will in the embodied consciousness and uses the body as an instrument, uses, as it is ordinarily put, the organs of<br \/>\naction. This natural action too has a double element, a physiconervous impulse and behind it a mental-nervous power-value of<br \/>\ninstinctive will-impulse. That makes up the nexus of first perceptions and actions which is common to all developing animal<br \/>\nlife. But in addition there is in the manas or sense-mind a first resulting thought-element which accompanies the operations of<br \/>\nanimal life. Just as the living body has a certain pervading and possessing action of consciousness,<br \/>\n<i>citta<\/i>, which forms into this<br \/>\nsense-mind, so the sense-mind has in it a certain pervading and possessing power which mentally uses the sense data, turns them<br \/>\ninto perceptions and first ideas, associates experience with other experiences, and in some way or other thinks and feels and wills<br \/>\non the sense basis. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThis sensational thought-mind which is based upon sense,<br \/>\nmemory, association, first ideas and resultant generalisations or secondary ideas, is common to all developed animal life and<br \/>\nmentality. Man indeed has given it an immense development and range and complexity impossible to the animal, but still,<br \/>\nif he stopped there, he would only be a more highly effective animal. He gets beyond the animal range and height because he <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>664<\/font>&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\thas been able to disengage and separate to a greater or less extent<br \/>\nhis thought action from the sense mentality, to draw back from the latter and observe its data and to act on it from above by<br \/>\na separated and partially freed intelligence. The intelligence and will of the animal are involved in the sense-mind and therefore<br \/>\naltogether governed by it and carried on its stream of sensations, sense-perceptions, impulses; it is instinctive. Man is able to use<br \/>\na reason and will, a self-observing, thinking and all-observing, an intelligently willing mind which is no longer involved in the<br \/>\nsense-mind, but acts from above and behind it in its own right, with a certain separateness and freedom. He is reflective, has a<br \/>\ncertain relative freedom of intelligent will. He has liberated in himself and has formed into a separate power the buddhi. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut what is this buddhi? From the point of view of Yogic knowledge we may say that it is that instrument of the soul, of<br \/>\nthe inner conscious being in nature, of the Purusha, by which it comes into some kind of conscious and ordered possession both<br \/>\nof itself and its surroundings. Behind all the action of the chitta and manas there is this soul, this Purusha; but in the lower forms<br \/>\nof life it is mostly subconscient, asleep or half-awake, absorbed in the mechanical action of Nature; but it becomes more and<br \/>\nmore awake and comes more and more forward as it rises in the scale of life. By the activity of the buddhi it begins the process of<br \/>\nan entire awakening. In the lower actions of the mind the soul suffers Nature rather than possesses her; for it is there entirely<br \/>\na slave to the mechanism which has brought it into conscious embodied experience. But in the buddhi we get to something,<br \/>\nstill a natural instrumentation, by which yet Nature seems to be helping and arming the Purusha to understand, possess and<br \/>\nmaster her. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tNeither understanding, possession nor mastery is complete,<br \/>\neither because the buddhi in us is itself still incomplete, only yet half developed and half formed, or because it is in its nature<br \/>\nonly an intermediary instrument and before we can get complete knowledge and mastery, we must rise to something greater<br \/>\nthan the buddhi. Still it is a movement by which we come to the knowledge that there is a power within us greater than the<br \/>\n &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>665<\/font>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tanimal life, a truth greater than the first truths or appearances<br \/>\nperceived by the sense-mind, and can try to get at that truth and to labour towards a greater and more successful power of action<br \/>\nand control, a more effective government both of our own nature and the nature of things around us, a higher knowledge, a higher<br \/>\npower, a higher and larger enjoyment, a more exalted range of being. What then is the final object of this trend? Evidently, it<br \/>\nmust be for the Purusha to get to the highest and fullest truth of itself and of things, greatest truth of soul or self and greatest<br \/>\ntruth of Nature, and to an action and a status of being which shall be the result of or identical with that Truth, the power of<br \/>\nthis greatest knowledge and the enjoyment of that greatest being and consciousness to which it opens. This must be the final result<br \/>\nof the evolution of the conscious being in Nature. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tTo arrive then at the whole truth of our self and Spirit and<br \/>\nthe knowledge, greatness, bliss of our free and complete being must be the object of the purification, liberation and perfection<br \/>\nof the buddhi. But it is a common idea that this means not the full possession of Nature by the Purusha, but a rejection of Nature.<br \/>\nWe are to get at self by the removal of the action of Prakriti. As the buddhi, coming to the knowledge that the sense-mind<br \/>\nonly gives us appearances in which the soul is subject to Nature, discovers more real truths behind them, the soul must arrive at<br \/>\nthis knowledge that the buddhi too, when turned upon Nature, can give us only appearances and enlarge the subjection, and<br \/>\nmust discover behind them the pure truth of the Self. The Self is something quite other than Nature and the buddhi must purify<br \/>\nitself of attachment to and preoccupation with natural things; so only can it discern and separate from them the pure Self<br \/>\nand Spirit: the knowledge of the pure Self and Spirit is the only real knowledge, Ananda of the pure Self and Spirit is the only<br \/>\nspiritual enjoyment, the consciousness and being of the pure Self and Spirit are the only real consciousness and being. Action and<br \/>\nwill must cease because all action is of the Nature; the will to be pure Self and Spirit means the cessation of all will to action. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut while the possession of the being, consciousness, delight, power of the Self is the condition of perfection,<br \/>\n\u2014 for it is only <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>666<\/font>&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tby knowing and possessing and living in the truth of itself that<br \/>\nthe soul can become free and perfect, \u2014 we hold that Nature is an eternal action and manifestation of the Spirit; Nature is<br \/>\nnot a devil&#8217;s trap, a set of misleading appearances created by desire, sense, life and mental will and intelligence, but these<br \/>\nphenomena are hints and indications and behind all of them is a truth of Spirit which exceeds and uses them. We hold that there<br \/>\nmust be an inherent spiritual gnosis and will by which the secret Spirit in all knows its own truth, wills, manifests and governs<br \/>\nits own being in Nature; to arrive at that, at communion with it or participation in it, must be part of our perfection. The<br \/>\nobject of the purification of the buddhi will then be to arrive at the possession of our own truth of self-being, but also at the<br \/>\npossession of the highest truth of our being in Nature. For that purpose we must first purify the buddhi of all that makes it<br \/>\nsubject to the sense-mind and, that once done, purify it from its own limitations and convert its inferior mental intelligence and<br \/>\nwill into the greater action of a spiritual will and knowledge. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThe movement of the buddhi to exceed the limits of the<br \/>\nsense-mind is an effort already half accomplished in the human evolution; it is part of the common operation of Nature in man.<br \/>\nThe original action of the thought-mind, the intelligence and will in man, is a subject action. It accepts the evidence of the senses,<br \/>\nthe commands of the life-cravings, instincts, desires, emotions, the impulses of the dynamic sense-mind and only tries to give<br \/>\nthem a more orderly direction and effective success. But the man whose reason and will are led and dominated by the lower<br \/>\nmind, is an inferior type of human nature, and the part of our conscious being which consents to this domination is the lowest<br \/>\npart of our manhood. The higher action of the buddhi is to exceed and control the lower mind, not indeed to get rid of it,<br \/>\nbut to raise all the action of which it is the first suggestion into the nobler plane of will and intelligence. The impressions of the<br \/>\nsense-mind are used by a thought which exceeds them and which arrives at truths they do not give, ideative<br \/>\n\t\t\ttruths of thought, truths of philosophy and science; a thinking,<br \/>\n\t\t\tdiscovering, philosophic mind overcomes, rectifies and dominates the<br \/>\n\t\t\tfirst mind of&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>667<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tsense impressions. The impulsive reactive sensational mentality,<br \/>\nthe life-cravings and the mind of emotional desire are taken up by the intelligent will and are overcome, are rectified and<br \/>\ndominated by a greater ethical mind which discovers and sets over them a law of right impulse, right desire, right emotion<br \/>\nand right action. The receptive, crudely enjoying sensational mentality, the emotional mind and life mind are taken up by<br \/>\nthe intelligence and are overcome, rectified and dominated by a deeper, happier aesthetic mind which discovers and sets above<br \/>\nthem a law of true delight and beauty. All these new formations are used by a general Power of the intellectual, thinking<br \/>\nand willing man in a soul of governing intellect, imagination, judgment, memory, volition, discerning reason and ideal feeling<br \/>\nwhich uses them for knowledge, self-development, experience, discovery, creation, effectuation, aspires, strives, inwardly attains, endeavours to make a higher thing of the life of the soul in Nature. The primitive desire-soul no longer governs the being. It<br \/>\nis still a desire-soul, but it is repressed and governed by a higher power, something which has manifested in itself the godheads<br \/>\nof Truth, Will, Good, Beauty and tries to subject life to them. The crude desire-soul and mind is trying to convert itself into an<br \/>\nideal soul and mind, and the proportion in which some effect and harmony of this greater conscious being has been found and<br \/>\nenthroned, is the measure of our increasing humanity. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut this is still a very incomplete movement. We find that<br \/>\nit progresses towards a greater completeness in proportion as we arrive at two kinds of perfection; first, a greater and greater<br \/>\ndetachment from the control of the lower suggestions; secondly, an increasing discovery of a self-existent Being, Light, Power and<br \/>\nAnanda which surpasses and transforms the normal humanity. The ethical mind becomes perfect in proportion as it detaches<br \/>\nitself from desire, sense suggestion, impulse, customary dictated action and discovers a self of Right, Love, Strength and Purity<br \/>\nin which it can live accomplished and make it the foundation of all its actions. The aesthetic mind is perfected in proportion as<br \/>\nit detaches itself from all its cruder pleasures and from outward conventional canons of the aesthetic reason and discovers a self&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>668<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\texistent self and spirit of pure and infinite Beauty and Delight<br \/>\nwhich gives its own light and joy to the material of the aesthesis. The mind of knowledge is perfected when it gets away from<br \/>\nimpression and dogma and opinion and discovers a light of self-knowledge and intuition which illumines all the workings of<br \/>\nthe sense and reason, all self-experience and world-experience. The will is perfected when it gets away from and behind its<br \/>\nimpulses and its customary ruts of effectuation and discovers an inner power of the Spirit which is the source of an intuitive<br \/>\nand luminous action and an original harmonious creation. The movement of perfection is away from all domination by the<br \/>\nlower nature and towards a pure and powerful reflection of the being, power, knowledge and delight of the Spirit and Self in the<br \/>\nbuddhi. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThe Yoga of self-perfection is to make this double movement<br \/>\nas absolute as possible. All immiscence of desire in the buddhi is an impurity. The intelligence coloured by desire is an impure<br \/>\nintelligence and it distorts Truth; the will coloured by desire is an impure will and it puts a stamp of distortion, pain and imperfection upon the soul&#8217;s activity. All immiscence of the emotions of the soul of desire is an impurity and similarly distorts both<br \/>\nthe knowledge and the action. All subjection of the buddhi to the sensations and impulses is an impurity. The thought and will<br \/>\nhave to stand back detached from desire, troubling emotion, distracting or mastering impulse and to act in their own right<br \/>\nuntil they can discover a greater guide, a Will, Tapas or divine Shakti which will take the place of desire and mental will and<br \/>\nimpulse, an Ananda or pure delight of the spirit and an illumined spiritual knowledge which will express themselves in the action<br \/>\nof that Shakti. This complete detachment, impossible without&nbsp; an entire self-government, equality, calm,<br \/>\n\t\t\t<i><font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#347;<\/font>ama<\/i>, <i>samat<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#257;<\/font><\/i>,<br \/>\n\t\t\t<i><font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#347;&#257;<\/font>nti<\/i>,<br \/>\nis the surest step towards the purification of the buddhi. A calm, equal and detached mind can alone reflect the peace or base the<br \/>\naction of the liberated spirit. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThe buddhi itself is burdened with a mixed and impure<br \/>\naction. When we reduce it to its own proper forms, we find that it has three stages or elevations of its functioning. First, <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>669<\/font>&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tits lowest basis is a habitual, customary action which is a link<br \/>\nbetween the higher reason and the sense-mind, a kind of current understanding. This understanding is in itself dependent on the<br \/>\nwitness of the senses and the rule of action which the reason deduces from the sense-mind&#8217;s perception of and attitude to life.<br \/>\nIt is not capable of itself forming pure thought and will, but it takes the workings of the higher reason and turns them into<br \/>\ncoin of opinion and customary standard of thought or canon of action. When we perform a sort of practical analysis of the<br \/>\nthinking mind, cut away this element and hold back the higher reason free, observing and silent, we find that this current understanding begins to run about in a futile circle, repeating all its formed opinions and responses to the impressions of things,<br \/>\nbut incapable of any strong adaptation and initiation. As it feels more and more the refusal of sanction from the higher reason,<br \/>\nit begins to fail, to lose confidence in itself and its forms and habits, to distrust the intellectual action and to fall into weakness and silence. The stilling of this current, running, circling, repeating thought-mind is the principal part of that silencing of<br \/>\nthe thought which is one of the most effective disciplines of Yoga. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tBut the higher reason itself has a first stage of dynamic, pragmatic<br \/>\n\t\t\tintellectuality in which creation, action and will are the real<br \/>\n\t\t\tmotive and thought and knowledge are employed to form basic<br \/>\n\t\t\tconstructions and suggestions which are used principally for<br \/>\n\t\t\teffectuation. To this pragmatic reason truth is only a formation of<br \/>\n\t\t\tthe intellect effective for the action of the inner and the outer<br \/>\n\t\t\tlife. When we cut it away from the still higher reason which seeks<br \/>\n\t\t\timpersonally to reflect Truth rather than to create personally<br \/>\n\t\t\teffective truth, we find then that this pragmatic reason can<br \/>\n\t\t\toriginate, progress, enlarge the experience by dynamic knowledge,<br \/>\n\t\t\tbut it has to depend on the current understanding as a pedestal and<br \/>\n\t\t\tbase and put its whole weight on life and becoming. It is in itself<br \/>\n\t\t\ttherefore a mind of the Will to life and action, much more a mind of<br \/>\n\t\t\tWill than a mind of knowledge: it does not live in any assured and<br \/>\n\t\t\tconstant and eternal Truth, but in progressing and changing aspects<br \/>\n\t\t\tof Truth which serve the shifting forms of our life and becoming or,<br \/>\n\t\t\tat the highest,&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>670<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\thelp life to grow and progress. By itself this pragmatic mind can<br \/>\ngive us no firm foundation and no fixed goal; it lives in the truth of the hour, not in any truth of eternity. But when purified of<br \/>\ndependence on the customary understanding, it is a great creator and in association with the highest mental reason it becomes a<br \/>\nstrong channel and bold servant for the effectuation of Truth in life. The value of its work will depend on the value and the<br \/>\npower of the highest truth-seeking reason. But by itself it is a sport of Time and a bondslave of Life. The seeker of the Silence<br \/>\nhas to cast it away from him; the seeker of the integral Divinity has to pass beyond it, to replace and transform this thinking<br \/>\nmind intent on Life by a greater effectuating spiritual Will, the Truth-Will of the spirit. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThe third and noblest stage of the intellectual will and reason is an intelligence which seeks for some universal reality or for<br \/>\na still higher self-existent Truth for its own sake and tries to live in that Truth. This is primarily a mind of knowledge and<br \/>\nonly secondarily a mind of Will. In its excess of tendency it often becomes incapable of Will except the one will to know;<br \/>\nfor action it is dependent on the aid of the pragmatic mind and therefore man tends in action to fall away from the purity of<br \/>\nthe Truth his highest knowledge holds into a mixed, inferior, inconstant and impure effectuation. The disparity, even when<br \/>\nit is not an opposition, between knowledge and will is one of the principal defects of the human buddhi. But there are other<br \/>\ninherent limitations of all human thinking. This highest Buddhi does not work in man in its own purity; it is assailed by the defects of the lower mentality, continually clouded by it, distorted, veiled, and prevented or lamed in its own proper action. Purified<br \/>\nas much as may be from that habit of mental degradation, the human buddhi is still a power that searches for the Truth, but is<br \/>\nnever in full or direct possession of it; it can only reflect truth of the spirit and try to make it its own by giving it a limited mental<br \/>\nvalue and a distinct mental body. Nor does it reflect integrally, but seizes either an uncertain totality or else a sum of limited<br \/>\nparticulars. First it seizes on this or that partial reflection and by subjection to the habit of customary mind turns it into a fixed<br \/>\n &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>671<\/font><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\timprisoning opinion; all new truth it judges from the standpoint<br \/>\nit has thus formed and therefore puts on it the colour of a limiting prejudgment. Release it as much as possible from this<br \/>\nhabit of limiting opinion, still it is subject to another affliction, the demand of the pragmatic mind for immediate effectuation,<br \/>\nwhich gives it no time to proceed to larger truth, but fixes it by the power of effective realisation in whatever it has already<br \/>\njudged, known and lived. Freed from all these chains, the buddhi can become a pure and flexible reflector of Truth, adding light to<br \/>\nlight, proceeding from realisation to realisation. It is then limited only by its own inherent limitations. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tThese limitations are mainly of two kinds. First, its realisations are only mental realisations; to get to the Truth itself<br \/>\nwe have to go beyond the mental buddhi. Again, the nature of the mind prevents it from making an effective unification<br \/>\nof the truths it seizes. It can only put them side by side and see oppositions or effect some kind of partial, executive and<br \/>\npractical combination. But it finds finally that the aspects of the Truth are infinite and that none of its intellectual forms are<br \/>\nquite valid, because the spirit is infinite and in the spirit all is true, but nothing in the mind can give the whole truth of the<br \/>\nspirit. Either then the buddhi becomes a pure mirror of many reflections, reflecting all truth that falls on it, but ineffective and<br \/>\nwhen turned to action either incapable of decision or chaotic, or it has to make a selection and act as if that partiality were<br \/>\nthe whole truth, though it knows otherwise. It acts in a helpless limitation of Ignorance, though it may hold a Truth far greater<br \/>\nthan its action. On the other hand, it may turn away from life and thought and seek to exceed itself and pass into the Truth beyond<br \/>\nit. This it may do by seizing on some aspect, some principle, some symbol or suggestion of reality and pushing that to its absolute,<br \/>\nall-absorbing, all-excluding term of realisation or by seizing on and realising some idea of indeterminate Being or Non-Being<br \/>\nfrom which all thought and life fall away into cessation. The buddhi casts itself into a luminous sleep and the soul passes<br \/>\naway into some ineffable height of spiritual being. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\tTherefore in dealing with the buddhi, we must either take<br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>672<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp; one of these choices or else try the rarer adventure of lifting the<br \/>\nsoul from the mental being into the spiritual gnosis to see what we can find in the very core of that supernal light and power. This<br \/>\ngnosis contains the sun of the divine Knowledge-Will burning in the heavens of the supreme conscious Being, to which the mental<br \/>\nintelligence and will are only a focus of diffused and deflected rays and reflections. That possesses the divine unity and yet<br \/>\nor rather therefore can govern the multiplicity and diversity: whatever selection, self-limitation, combination it makes is not<br \/>\nimposed on it by Ignorance, but is self-developed by a power of self-possessing divine Knowledge. When the gnosis is gained, it<br \/>\ncan then be turned on the whole nature to divinise the human being. It is impossible to rise into it at once; if that could be done,<br \/>\nit would mean a sudden and violent overshooting, a breaking or slipping through the gates of the Sun, <i>s<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#363;<\/font>ryasya dv<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#257;<\/font>r<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#257;<\/font><\/i>, without<br \/>\nnear possibility of return. We have to form as a link or bridge an intuitive or illuminated mind, which is not the direct gnosis,<br \/>\nbut in which a first derivative body of the gnosis can form. This illumined mind will first be a mixed power which we shall have<br \/>\nto purify of all its mental dependence and mental forms so as to convert all willing and thinking into thought-sight and truth-seeing will by an illumined discrimination, intuition, inspiration, revelation. That will be the final purification of the intelligence<br \/>\nand the preparation for the siddhi of the gnosis. &nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<font size=\"2\">Page <font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 <\/font>673<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chapter VII &nbsp; Purification \u2014 Intelligence and Will &nbsp; TO PURIFY the buddhi we must first understand its rather complex composition. And first we have&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","wpcat-46-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}